LAS VEGAS — For a guy who with a loss tonight at UFC 146 would almost certainly be out of the UFC, and whose MMA career could be done as well, Dan Hardy feels supremely confident.

“I’m here now, and I’m a lot more positive about where I’m at,” Hardy (23-10 MMA, 4-4 UFC) told MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com) prior to his preliminary-card match against Duane “Bang” Ludwig (21-12 MMA, 4-3 UFC). “I think the reason for that is I’ve had the quickest rise and quickest fall that I know of in the UFC.

“Four up, four down. I’m back to the beginning. I’m back on the undercard. Back to feeling like this is my debut fight in the UFC. Back to having a good time and enjoying the process.”

Hard and Ludwig tag on tonight’s FX-televised preliminary card at MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas. It follows additional prelims on Facebook and precedes the night’s pay-per-view main card.

Four consecutive losses are unheard of in the UFC. So after Hardy’s most recent setback (a submission defeat to Chris Lytle this past August), the English veteran was surprised to learn UFC CEO Lorenzo Fertitta had taken to Twitter promising him one more bout in the octagon.

“In my head I was moving on,” said Hardy, who previously had fallen to Georges St-Pierre, Carlos Condit and Anthony Johnson. “I was going to do something else. I was going to step away for a while and think about it to make the right decision. But when I heard about (Feritta’s) tweet, that really changed some things. I had to make some changes, put things right that were wrong, kind of exorcise those demons and prove that Lorenzo’s decision to keep me around was the right one.

“There was a lot of negative energy around me. A lot of people around me that I didn’t want around me. I got back to Vegas, and I moved into a new house, got a new car. I changed everything that needed to be changed. I got a whole new training camp. I’ve enjoyed the whole process. Every day has been productive.”

Hardy’s new training partners in Las Vegas, which include Frank Mir, have physically prepared him for the hard-hitting Ludwig. But the 30-year-old Hardy credits his own soul-searching to getting his mindset right.

Hardy said that hadn’t been the case since he took GSP the distance back in March 2010.

“Even after the title fight, I was still riding high, and I was still feeling good,” he said. “Then I dropped three losses, and things change. I’ve felt the high of the sport, and now I’ve felt the low of it. It’s put me in a more realistic mindset. It makes you realize you’re doing it for yourself and you got to enjoy it. It’s a rough sport to be in for the money. We go through a hell of a lot for what we get paid.

“My passion in this sport has always been to compete as a martial artist and to be as good as I can, take this as far as I can, and compete as the highest level I can. I just got away from that.”

While his tatted arms, red mohawk and ability to hype a fight have made him a fan favorite, Hardy admitted to getting caught up in the fans’ love for a brawling style as well.

“I kind of got this reputation of being a brawler, and I kind of liked it I guess,” Hardy said. “I’m not. All the way through my career, I’ve been a counter striker. The Rory Markham fight, ‘Draw him in, draw him in, and catch him.’

“The same with the (Marcus) Davis and the (Mike) Swick fights. I talked the Davis fight up, but the shots I hit him with were all counter punches. Same with Swick. Somewhere along the line, I switched from being a smart counterstriker to being a street fighter. And it doesn’t suit me.”

But win or lose against Ludwig, Hardy said he’s comfortable with how his career has played out to this point. Still he thinks he owes himself, and the fans, one more explosive fight.

“I’m all in,” said Hardy, whose aspirations outside the cage include writing and traveling. “The good thing is I’m all in cause I want to be. I had one foot out the door for the Lytle fight, and that obviously wasn’t the right frame of mind to be in.

“Now I’m all in because I know that when it does come to an end, it’s not a big deal. There are other things I want to do. I can fully invest my time right now because I know it might be the last time I invest it. That changes everything, my approach in my head where I’m at now, and where I see myself in the future. I’m fighting fights to fight and enjoying every one.”